Thursday 14 April 2016

Stack-o-cats baby quilt

Well I think I can safely say that's me hooked on quilting now. This is my second quilt and I so enjoyed making it and am very happy with how it turned out! I still love sewing clothes but have a feeling there will be more quilts making an appearance here now, in between sewing for me and toddler sewing. This quilt uses the 'Quilt for a baby boy' pattern, another free pattern from Purl Soho.
I could go on a rant about gender/sewing/colours etc here but I won't as Molly, the creator of the pattern quite clearly states she doesn't agree with genderising colours/patterns etc but created this quilt for a particular baby boy, hence the name.




The starting point for this quilt was when I saw the cat print fabric on M is for Make. Well actually the starting point was of course my friend having her baby girl but when I saw the cat fabric, that's when I knew I was going to make her a quilt as my friend loves cats and knitting so this 'stack-o-cats' fabric featuring cats with balls of wool was just perfect! I couldn't decide between the two colour-ways of the print so I ordered both thinking I would find fabrics in my stash to co-ordinate (like I did on my first quilt). However I could only find the green, violet and the coral fabric in my stash so I contacted Kate at 'M is for Make' and she was brilliant! (I'm not getting any sponsorship or freebies from them, I just happen to love their selection of fabrics, and their customer service). She gave me a list of options that all went really well and I picked out some solids, and the lovely Atelier Brunette tangerine.  The white is a lovely quality double sheet I found in our local charity shop (for £1) and the binding is Tangerine Kona, also used in the quilt. I bought the cotton batting from my local Hobbycraft store.




I am so pleased with how this quilt turned out! I love the combination of colours but I think it's the expanses of white that really set the colours off and make this quilt so nice and bold. I used the Purl Soho tutorials again, for making double-fold binding, sewing on double-fold binding, and slip stitching, as I find these so clear and helpful.  The quilt instructions by Molly are also easy to follow and the nice straight lines make for easy quilting.  I think my next quilting challenge might be to try some more free-form quilting, using circles and waves instead of just straight lines. So many things I've read about quilting say a walking foot makes a huge difference but for my Bernina that would mean £80-100 so I think that will need to wait a while. In the meantime I've got a foot my mum used for free-hand machine embroidery so I'm going to do some experiments with that. There's also the rabbit hole of quilting blogs which I've just discovered so I may be spending a lot of my time getting inspiration from them!




8 comments:

  1. Lovely! I like the use of triangles to make chevrons.

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    1. Thanks Claire! It's really effective isn't it?!

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  2. Lovely quilt! I really love that fabric range too. I'm sure this will be a much appreciated gift.

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    1. Thanks Kerry. Yes I thought the fabric would appeal to you too!

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  3. I love a good rant about gender-based colors, no matter the occasion. And I love the ones you picked for this little quilt! Any kiddo or adult could appreciate these :)

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    1. Haha oh well, I'm sure I'll have a few good rants on it to come! Yes, the good thing about buying fabrics for quilts, as opposed to stash-busting, is I've got left-overs I can use for another quilt!

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  4. Lovely! The colours are really nice. And, yes, the whole gender based colour thing. Until he went to school, pink was Small Boy's favourite colour. Now it's deemed a girl's colour, apparently!

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    1. Thanks Helen. That's such a shame your son doesn't like pink anymore but I think it's really hard for them not to absorb these influences once they're at school.

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